Originally published on the CGS blog on October 11, 2013.
Something new and revolutionary is happening. U.S. citizens are appealing to the United Nations to take action to stop their own national government from using drones by demonstrating support for Pakistan’s call for the U.N to act to stop all weaponized drone attacks, including U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan.
Nick Mottern of KnowDrones.org writes:
“This is a preliminary report on last week’s six–day (Sept. 23-28) street witness that was organized at some of the busiest locations in New York City by the Granny Peace Brigade (GPB) to call for an international ban on weaponized drones and drone surveillance. . . . [It] was timed to coincide with the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, and it turned out to coincide with the plea before the General Assembly by Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, for a halt to US drone strikes against Pakistan. . . .The GPB witness involved at least 20 volunteers from New York City, New Jersey, Westchester County, NY and even Rochester, NY, and was supported by KnowDrones.org, World Can’t Wait, New York Peace Action, Brooklyn for Peace, CodePink NYC and the War Resisters League, all joining the GPB in the No Drones Coalition.”
Mottern’s report goes on to say, “The action was preceded by letters from the GPB to Ban Ki Moon, UN General Secretary, to appropriate UN agencies and to consulates of nations that are believed to be sympathetic to a ban on weaponized drones and drone surveillance.”
This event reflects a new view on how to act to influence public policy: protest against the violent actions of your national government by seeking to prevent counter-productive interpretations of the law at the international level. It is very much like appealing to the U.S. federal government to stop something that your state government is doing like supporting school segregation or preventing same-sex marriages.
One might argue that this effort won’t work because the U.N. can’t make laws and international law doesn’t apply to any nation that won’t ratify the relevant treaty. But such a view is just arguing about what the situation happens to be at the moment, not what it will be or should be in the future. National governments should be morally obliged to conform to a higher law of humanity just as the governments of U.S. states conforms to the U.S. Constitution and U.S. federal law.
We need a world ruled by a constitution and world law made by a parliament. The U.N. and international law are steps in the right direction, but we need to have world law in order to outlaw all violence and wars within the global community just as has already been accomplished within many democratic national communities. More and more members of the global community are coming to realize that truth.
Ronald J. Glossop is a Professor Emeritus at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and a board member of GlobalSolutions.org
